Creating conference sites with OpenConferenceWare

Excerpt

OpenConferenceWare is the application running this site. The software is themeable, customizable and open sourced: anyone can use it to run their own conference site. OpenConferenceWare's developers would like to talk with users about making the software better, organizers about using it for other events, and with those interested in joining the development team.

Description

The conference team quickly realized there wasn’t anything available that met our needs and that we would need to build something. Rather than create another closed source app for just our conference, we decided to build an open source platform that we and others could reuse for other events.

OpenConferenceWare was born out of the necessity to support Open Source Bridge. It’s a much enhanced fork of the OpenProposals application we built to collect proposals for Ignite Portland . The code works well and is in production use on half-a-dozen sites by thousands of people.

In this BOF, the developers of OpenConferenceWare will give a quick demonstration of how to set up the software, administer it and add a custom theme. These tasks are the hardest part of getting started with the software, but once you get it going, it’s a quality Ruby on Rails application with generally good test coverage and sensible design.

We’d like to spend the rest of the BOF talking with the audience. We’d like to hear feedback from the software’s end-users about how to make it friendlier and more useful. We’d like to hear from event organizers interested in using the software. We’d also really like to hear from those interested in joining the development team for this open source project.

Sessions

Code sprints are events where developers quickly complete coding tasks in a collaborative environment. A panel of skilled developers will share their experiences for organizing effective code sprints so you can better participate and organize your own. The panel members have organized and participated in over a hundred sprints (ranging from Django to JRuby) and used sprints as the primary way to develop community-oriented projects (e.g., Calagator). While most of the discussion will be about volunteer-run open source code sprints, many of the ideas will be readily applicable to improving development at your workplace. The panel will offer practical, actionable advice that you can use and answer your questions.

OpenConferenceWare is the application running this site. The software is themeable, customizable and open sourced: anyone can use it to run their own conference site. OpenConferenceWare’s developers would like to talk with users about making the software better, organizers about using it for other events, and with those interested in joining the development team.

Sessions

Configuration management tools are finally coming into their own. Powerful, automated infrastructure management is now available in a wide variety of open source tools. Tools written in different languages, using varying operational methodologies and embracing differing philosophies. Come meet some of the creators and maintainers of these cutting edge tools like cfengine, Puppet, AutomateIT, Chef, and bcfg2 and quiz them in the why and hows of their tools and the philosophies behind them.

Code sprints are events where developers quickly complete coding tasks in a collaborative environment. A panel of skilled developers will share their experiences for organizing effective code sprints so you can better participate and organize your own. The panel members have organized and participated in over a hundred sprints (ranging from Django to JRuby) and used sprints as the primary way to develop community-oriented projects (e.g., Calagator). While most of the discussion will be about volunteer-run open source code sprints, many of the ideas will be readily applicable to improving development at your workplace. The panel will offer practical, actionable advice that you can use and answer your questions.

OpenConferenceWare is the application running this site. The software is themeable, customizable and open sourced: anyone can use it to run their own conference site. OpenConferenceWare’s developers would like to talk with users about making the software better, organizers about using it for other events, and with those interested in joining the development team.